Independent developer and publisher Nnooo have announced recently the release date of The Legend of Kusakari, an adventure-puzzle game for the Nintendo 3DS. Being developed by the Japanese studio, Librage, the game is set for release on August 25 of this year for the West.
In The Legend of Kusakari you play the role of Shiba Kari, a humble grass cutter who keeps the fields clean so brave warriors can focus on defeating evil and in doing so, eventually defeat the Demon King. While cutting the grass Shiba Kari has to avoid the battles going on around him as well as the slimes, dragons and other objects trying to distract him from his heroic task. He can level-up his scythe within each level of the game by cutting more grass and use this to unleash a powerful grass-cutting swing. He literally lives to cut the grass, so if he stops even for a short period he will lose health which can be replenished by finding and cutting a clump of life-giving blue grass. The faster Shiba Kari completes each level, the higher his rank will be for that level. On completing each level he is rewarded with a fanfare from the good king’s band, in which one of the trumpeters is not quite as proficient as the other band members.Founder and Creative Director of Nnooo, Nic Watt says:“There is a constant and unfulfilled demand to bring Japanese content to western markets so we will be bringing great Japanese games to western consoles and handhelds as part of our publishing business. The Legend of Kusakari is full of quirky humour, has great polished gameplay and is a lot of fun to play. We were left with smiles on our faces when we played this on our Japanese Nintendo 3DS so we decided to sign it up and publish it in the west.”Developer Librage were inspired to make The Legend of Kusakari from cutting the grass in the SNES version of The Legend of Zelda. “We felt that we would like to produce and play a game which had this as a central mechanic,” according to Kenichi Fujimoto, localisation manager at Librage. “However, we didn’t feel it would be appealing if players just cut grass, so we introduced the puzzle/challenge element. We also wanted to have a story hook to keep the player interested. Seeing as there are so many stories about a brave warrior beating an evil King, we thought it would be interesting to compose the story from a fresh point of view. In The Legend of Kusakari you are a humble grass cutter who keeps the battlefields clean.”The game’s 50 levels are expected to take players around 10 hours to complete. There are an additional 10 levels to unlock which can take up to another 10 hours to finish. There is also a Green Thumb Almanac system, a book which documents all the different types of grass, plants and weeds you cut. There are various conditions under which players can get each collectible plant which will require them to attempt different ways of playing the levels to unlock them.The game also has an endless mode where the grass keeps spawning for as long as Shiba Kari can stay alive to cut it. Finding and cutting the elusive blue grass is the key to survival in this mode. Fortunately there’s a map and a sprint ability to help him survive. Online leaderboards for this mode will turn you from humble grass cutter to legendary lawn-mowing champion!And that out-of-tune trumpeter? An incompetent relative of the good king, leaving us wondering just how good that king is!The Legend of Kusakari is priced at US$4.99 / €4.99 / £3.99 / AUS$6.99 / NZ$7.99.
